The Flawed Hero An Expedition Into What Doesn’t Make You Tick -Patrick- The Flawed Hero is a pretty self-explanatory archetype. It takes the traditional hero, who always slays the beast, saves the damsel, beats city hall, and never has a moment of humanity, and expands on it in a more realistic and humanist way. It spans cultural boundaries, suggesting that it is not the creation of one people, but something deeper, ingrained in human nature. Carl Jung theorizes that character archetypes are the reflection of basic human psychological and emotional need. Abbie Hoffman said: “Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” And, though Hoffman was not in any way speaking of mythological heroes and their correlation to modern media, I believe the same can be said of the character model. The danger, security, good, evil, humanity, and perfection seen in the various archetypes are concentrations of the approximate grey area that is human nature. Myth One - Zeus The model of the traditional hero often doubles as that of a God. What makes the individual so heroic is a passage of some sort of quest, usually entailing the thwarting of death, the adoption/receiving of God-like qualities or abilities, and idolization more nifty then your favorite Christmas Goose (see Hero
Woman! This Doesn't CONCERN YOU!
Cycle). And there’s no God hotter off the block then Greek head honcho Zeus. But the Big Z’s got his fair share of flaws. For starters, he is petty and vengeful; his punishments (extensive as they were) were cruel and unusual (usually turning the opposing party into an animal or landform) and that doesn’t even touch upon his ticker-tape parades of eroticism, his anamorphic fetish, and sexy use of turning into goats and the like. STICK A FORK IN ME, SAILOR! When Chelone refused to attend the wedding of Zeus and his wife Hera (“SCREW THE ELECTRIC SLIDE, GREECE!”) he turned her into a tortoise. A tortoise! Another priceless anecdote from the scrapbook entails Tantalus (himself a half-breed son of Zeus) who tries to no avail to make the Gods eat the entrails of his own slaughtered son. His motivation for this is not entirely clear to me (I suppose everyone wants to pull one over on the Gods) but, irregardless of how weird it is that he killed his son just for that purpose, ingesting human is a big no-no in the divinity handbook. His punishment for this is standing for all of eternity up to his chin in an icy cold stream, plagued by a terrible thirst. Should he try to bend and drink from the stream, the water level sinks away from him, always out of reach of his mouth. But despite these harsh imperfections (not going into the copious amounts of incest) he’s still the guy at the party that everyone wants to do a keg-stand with, and he still has great hair.
Myth Two - Cúchulainn
Cuchulainn
Despite having a name whose English translation is IMPOSSIBLE to spell, Cúchulainn was an Irish hero, often regarded as the most important and famous figure of celtic mythology. He is seen as a valiant hero of battle, defending Ireland (or Scotland, as Cookie has been sort of whored around the UK, though is usually attributed to Ireland). But when on the battlefield he undergoes ríastrad, a transformation in which he (lietrally) becomes a bloodthirsty monster who fails to recognize sides or allies, and killes everyone in his vecinity. This is considered to be a flaw by most measures. But still he is revered as a hero, and a simbol of the Celtic culture. Even if you can’t say his name ten times fast. Film – Max Fisher of Wes Anerson’s Rushmore Max Fisher (Jason Schwartzman) is the son of a barber and a student at the prestigious Rushmore acadamy where he is founder and president of a massive list of clubs, committees, and other extra-curricular activities. His time being occupied at all time by these obbligations, he spends no time on his actual academics and is constantly failing, often in danger of expulsion. After hearing a speech that he made at the acadamy chapel, Max admires and befriends local steel tycoon Herman Blume (Bill Murray). Also in this mix, he meets Rushmore teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams) who he quickly falls in love with. She is obviously far too old for him, he being a sophomore student, she a full grown woman with gainful employment. After some time of being a three-muskateers-style platonic trio, Blume also falls in love with he
Oh, Are They?
r, setting the two friends against eachother vying for the love of a woman who is too old for one, too young for the other. It should also be noted that Blume is unhappily married. After some hilarious and depressing misadventures, a hell of a great prank war montauge to The Who’s “You Are Forgiven!”, the greatest shot of people dancing in slow motion EVER to The Faces’ “Oh La La”, and a play about ‘Nam, Max and Herman accept their place as friends of Rosemary and each other, resolving their issues. But throughout the film, his deep rooted flaws are exposed; that he is petty, childish, immature, confused, and bitter. But in the end, as with many (but not all) Flawed Heros, Max Fisher overcomes these blemishes of his character and does the right thing. The reason he is a great modernization of the archetype is the way the situations in the movie are all painfully real (though somehow at the same time highly absurd) and the actions of the characters reflect how we denizens of modern society (ridiculous and childish we are) may very well act in these almost surreal social situations. And in the cases of Max and Herman, the “right thing” is just overcoming their personaliy flaws and being functional, moderately well-adjusted members of society. The modern Flawed Hero often faces completely introspective challenges. The archetype is dealt with heavily in all of Wes Anderson’s films, as characters who are, overall ridiculous, but somehow find it in their heart to continue productive lives, giving them the most relatable form of heroism. The Flawed Hero And You Ultimately, the Flawed Hero is a humanized version of the Traditional Hero. But that is much deeper then it sounds at face value. We humans struggle to be heroes, God-like figures of complete perfection. But we just can’t. There’s something in our mortality that holds imperfections, the blemish of man’s higher-level thinking, the way we are proud, embarrassed, gullible, foul-tempered, are the very things that define our humanity. The Flawed Hero gives us the comfort that even if we couldn’t quite kill the dragon, we could still do great things in spite of ourselves. And, I belive, that makes for a much more interasting and involving character then the predictable hero. The Flawed Hero alows us to acknowledge and even to celebrate the defects of our reality, accept them as beautiful, to bleed red and die of old age, or a venerial disease, or falling in front of a Subway, not being smote at the hand of Poseidon. We are all enemies of ourselves, fighting a futile fight that will never be won to be perfect. And in this struggle we are martyred as heroes.
An Expedition Into What Doesn’t Make You Tick
-Patrick-
The Flawed Hero is a pretty self-explanatory archetype. It takes the traditional hero, who always slays the beast, saves the damsel, beats city hall, and never has a moment of humanity, and expands on it in a more realistic and humanist way. It spans cultural boundaries, suggesting that it is not the creation of one people, but something deeper, ingrained in human nature. Carl Jung theorizes that character archetypes are the reflection of basic human psychological and emotional need. Abbie Hoffman said: “Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” And, though Hoffman was not in any way speaking of mythological heroes and their correlation to modern media, I believe the same can be said of the character model. The danger, security, good, evil, humanity, and perfection seen in the various archetypes are concentrations of the approximate grey area that is human nature.
Myth One - Zeus
The model of the traditional hero often doubles as that of a God. What makes the individual so heroic is a passage of some sort of quest, usually entailing the thwarting of death, the adoption/receiving of God-like qualities or abilities, and idolization more nifty then your favorite Christmas Goose (see Hero
Myth Two - Cúchulainn
Despite having a name whose English translation is IMPOSSIBLE to spell, Cúchulainn was an Irish hero, often regarded as the most important and famous figure of celtic mythology. He is seen as a valiant hero of battle, defending Ireland (or Scotland, as Cookie has been sort of whored around the UK, though is usually attributed to Ireland). But when on the battlefield he undergoes ríastrad, a transformation in which he (lietrally) becomes a bloodthirsty monster who fails to recognize sides or allies, and killes everyone in his vecinity. This is considered to be a flaw by most measures. But still he is revered as a hero, and a simbol of the Celtic culture. Even if you can’t say his name ten times fast.
Film – Max Fisher of Wes Anerson’s Rushmore
Max Fisher (Jason Schwartzman) is the son of a barber and a student at the prestigious Rushmore acadamy where he is founder and president of a massive list of clubs, committees, and other extra-curricular activities. His time being occupied at all time by these obbligations, he spends no time on his actual academics and is constantly failing, often in danger of expulsion. After hearing a speech that he made at the acadamy chapel, Max admires and befriends local steel tycoon Herman Blume (Bill Murray). Also in this mix, he meets Rushmore teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams) who he quickly falls in love with. She is obviously far too old for him, he being a sophomore student, she a full grown woman with gainful employment. After some time of being a three-muskateers-style platonic trio, Blume also falls in love with he
The Flawed Hero And You
Ultimately, the Flawed Hero is a humanized version of the Traditional Hero. But that is much deeper then it sounds at face value. We humans struggle to be heroes, God-like figures of complete perfection. But we just can’t. There’s something in our mortality that holds imperfections, the blemish of man’s higher-level thinking, the way we are proud, embarrassed, gullible, foul-tempered, are the very things that define our humanity. The Flawed Hero gives us the comfort that even if we couldn’t quite kill the dragon, we could still do great things in spite of ourselves. And, I belive, that makes for a much more interasting and involving character then the predictable hero. The Flawed Hero alows us to acknowledge and even to celebrate the defects of our reality, accept them as beautiful, to bleed red and die of old age, or a venerial disease, or falling in front of a Subway, not being smote at the hand of Poseidon. We are all enemies of ourselves, fighting a futile fight that will never be won to be perfect. And in this struggle we are martyred as heroes.